Report Urges Nepal and China to Stop Rights Abuses Against Tibetans

A Tibetan man stands near a wall painted with the Tibetan flag during festivities marking the last day of the Tibetan New Year, or Losar, in Kathmandu on March 4, 2014

Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press

Nepal—home to tens of thousands of exiled Tibetans—is putting ever-tighter restrictions on their basic rights, according to a new report that points a finger of blame at China.

Tibetans in Nepal “face excessive use of force by police, preventive detention, torture and ill-treatment when detained,” according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday. They also face “intrusive surveillance and arbitrary application of vaguely formulated and overly broad definitions of security offenses,” the New York-based advocacy group said.

Human Rights Watch urged Nepal’s government to protect the rights of its Tibetan residents including their freedom of expression and assembly. It also urged China not to pressure Nepal to take actions “that are in contradiction with international human rights and refugee law.”

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Nepal and Tibet share a mountainous border. Since the Dalai Lama fled to India from Tibet in 1959, several thousand Tibetans have settled in Nepal, for the most part mixing peacefully with the country’s Buddhist and Hindu communities.

China, which provides significant financial and development aid to Nepal, has pressed the Nepalese government to rein in anti-China activities on its soil. The Chinese pressure has grown since a 2008 uprising in Tibet that China says was orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans in exile. The Dalai Lama has dismissed the allegations that he advocated violence.

The population of exiled Tibetans in Nepal is estimated at about 15,000 to 20,000. Most revere the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader. They occasionally organize rallies and demonstrations to protest what they see as China’s occupation of their homeland of Tibet—giving rise to clashes with Nepali security forces. Tibetans in Nepal also face restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to jobs.

China’s security concerns over Tibetan activities in Nepal has grounding in early Tibetan resistance against its occupation of Tibet in early 1950s. In late 1950s, scores of Tibetans, including monks, took up guerrilla warfare against the Chinese army. They were trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency but facing crushing defeat, they retreated to mountain hideout in Mustang region of Nepal in 1960. The resistance eventually died but the escape that Nepal’s Himalayan frontiers provided to the Tibetan rebels underscored geopolitical importance for Chinese rulers to scrutinize Tibetan activities in Nepal.

Nepal’s relations with Tibet perhaps goes back to antiquity. A Nepali princess famous in local folklore as Bhrikuti is said to have introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the seventh century. The trade between the two political territories flourished through the trans-Himalayan routes in the medieval age. Many mountain-dwelling communities in Nepal, including the Sherpas, trace their lineage to Tibet. One of the still popular Nepali women’s proverbs invokes the importance that trade with Lhasa, administrative capital of Tibet, once held in the people’s lives in Nepal. “There is gold in Lhasa [but] my ears are bare,” the proverb says.

Today Nepal’s political establishment sees Tibet in context of China’s growing economic and military might. An official joint statement between China and Nepal during Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s Nepal visit in January 2012 elucidated this new geopolitical reality.

“The Nepalese side reiterated that there is only one China in the world, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China,” the statement said. “Both Taiwan and Tibet are integral parts of the Chinese territory. The Nepalese side firmly supports the efforts made by the Chinese side to uphold state sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity, and does not allow any forces to use Nepalese territory for any anti-China or separatist activities.”

“The Chinese side highly appreciated the position of the Nepalese side,” the statement further said.

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